The shooting happened on Sunday shortly after three in the afternoon local time (21:00 CET). Police officers followed a thirty-seven-year-old man to the subway, whom they saw enter the stop without paying and who disobeyed the order to stop, The Guardian recapitulates the events. “If you don’t stop chasing me, I’m going to kill you,” the man told them, according to Police Chief Jeffrey Maddrey.
Around that moment, the police officers noticed that the man had a knife. A pair of police officers followed him to the subway car and there was a shooting. A video shot by one of the passengers shows how the other passengers flee after the shooting, while police officers try to help the injured. At that moment, one of the policemen realizes that he himself has been hit.
According to Maddrey, the pursued man turned against the police in the car and started approaching them with a knife in his hand. The police subsequently shot him several times in self-defense. He is currently in the hospital but is expected to make a full recovery. On the other hand, a forty-nine-year-old man who was traveling in the next car and who was hit in the head by the police is in critical condition. Another twenty-six-year-old woman was fortunately only grazed by the projectile.
The policeman who was shot was hit in the armpit, from where the bullet went through his chest and remained in his back. Even with him, however, doctors predict a full recovery. New York Mayor Eric Adams also visited her in the hospital. He described the man with the knife as a “professional criminal” who had already been arrested by the police more than twenty times. According to Maddrey, he also struggles with mental illness for a long time.
Current police commissioner Thomas Donlan, who took up his post only on Friday, promised a thorough investigation of the incident, but according to him, the man with the knife is clearly guilty. “We will work through today’s events, but make no mistake, the events that took place on the Sutter Avenue station platform are the result of the actions of an armed offender who confronted our officers doing the job we ask them to do,” he said.
The fact that other passengers were also shot during the incident, and one of the policemen in particular, is sensitive for the New York police. In 2019, its officers also attracted a lot of attention when they shot two of their colleagues during two different confrontations with suspects.
